Artist Statement

For my final project I have decided to put together a photo essay blog. Within this blog I will incorporate ideas from Stuart Hall, Michael Warner, and Anderson with regards to imagined communities, cultural roots, and perceptions of time.  

The goal is to gain perspectives from a variety of people with different backgrounds in the sport of running. I also want to collect photos from runners that say something about what running means to them or how they perceive running.

I have incorporating a survey as a part of technological popular culture to reveal various things about running and compiled the information into a blog. In doing so I have learned that there are not two runners that are alike. Runners have different preferences about where they run, who they run with, when they run, how time passes when they run, if they race, goals they have, etc. However, although there are not two runners that are exactly the same there are many similarities and common goals that overlap among runners to create an imagined community.

To address the cultural critique I focused on taking looking at what people said rather than what pictures were submitted. I initially thought I was going to focus more on the images that were sent to me and figure out a way to use them in the cultural critique aspect of this project. However, I discovered that in the process of producing my blog and getting survey results that what people had to say about running was much more interesting than the pictures I got (not to say that the pictures were not interesting). Also, not everyone sent in a picture that completed the survey. Therefore, not only were there more interesting things said but there was a greater quantity of things being said in general. As for the popular culture production I compiled the blog using information I got from a survey I put together. I also created two other pages, one is a photo page from photos people sent me, and the other is a video that I created about running. All of these I felt were relevant for my topic and this project.

In creating this blog I gained a greater sense of my imagined running community and have been inspired, encouraged, and supported by friends, family, family friends, and complete strangers. I have gained a deeper and broader appreciation and understanding for the sport through the words of people taking my survey and relating it to various anthropological works. I hope that others that see this blog can take something away from it to their benefit like I did in the process of creating it.

I also want to thank everyone that took my survey and/or sent me a running picture. I could not have done this project without you!